Hope you voted for The Right Party

Phew. What a relief that’s over, right? No more people yelling all day and all night on television about what they’re going to do for us

Phew. What a relief that’s over, right? No more people yelling all day and all night on television about what they’re going to do for us. No more goofy smiles and grand promises.

No more scrutiny of everything from nose hairs to puppy dog’s tails. No more symbols of hands, lotuses, brooms, clocks, bicycles, chillies, irons, engines... actually I can fill the whole space here describing election symbols given that we have one zillion political parties and counting.

I mean my voting booth well, not mine, but the one where I voted actually had three EVM machines to accommodate all the candidates and their symbols.

Voters display their inked fingers after casting their votes on polling day in Dadar. Pic/Pradeep Dhivar

Ever wondering why there were such long queues outside polling booths? Don’t buy that guff about more people voting than ever before. It was just the same old people who usually vote absolutely gobsmacked by the number of buttons in front of them and forgetting who they’d come to vote for.

Of course, there are some fallouts of what we did that day or more correctly on all those days — this election lasted, what, six months, right? For instance I have lost half my friends and family because THEY VOTED FOR THE WRONG PERSON.

There is no crime greater than this and when you consider no one got more than 31 per cent of the vote, you can imagine how many wrong people there are. Anyway, life is much easier without these friends because now on Facebook you can get back to liking pictures of cute kittens and ugly children instead of all those political fights.

Of course, you can get back to the... cricket? Who would believe that there’s some cricket going on right now, as we speak? Daredevils, Knight Riders, Super Kings... Shhh, don’t mention anything that begins with the letters M and I because you might lose even more friends in the next 10 minutes. We are sitting in M... you know what I mean. It’s even worse than what happened to the, you know, Hand party.

Of course, there’s football. I’ve heard and I’m a great one for gossip that by the end of this year India will become such a great super power that we will host all the Footie World Cups from now on. Also, all the Olympic Games ever. Brazil is not ready for it either one hears, just like Mumbai is never ready for the monsoon.

Also, by the end of next year, we’ll travel everywhere by bullet train and the year after that, India will have colonised Mars. When I say “we” I mean Indians living in India. The rest of the world will travel by the bullock carts we’ll be exporting to them.

That Mangalyan project is a bit behind the times because there are no humans on it. The humans on Indian bullet trains will get there first. Many people who voted for THE RIGHT PARTY have told me this.

Aren’t all those Indians who bought a ticket to get to Mars going to feel silly now? If only they’d waited six months for the most interminably tedious show on earth to come to an end. They could have gone there for free.

Of course, it is a bit disappointing that we’re not going to be getting free idlis, free mixies, free grinders, free laptops, free bicycles and stuff we would have had if someone else had become prime minister.

I was quite looking forward to free idlis and we can all do with a free laptop right? Plus my smart phone is on its last legs. Poor dear doesn’t have a gilded outer cover or anything.

Of course, still, one mustn’t complain. We’ve got Utopia to look forward to and plus, all those cultural delights. Like TV news anchors (female) being well covered from the tops of the heads to the backs of their heels. Or maybe Doordarshan does not exist any more.

Does it? And no films that are not about proper Indian culture to be made either. This means I think that you can sing a song in garish costumes on a bullet train but YOU CANNOT KISS. Of course, I looked outside my window and maybe those are not potholes I saw. Just digging digging digging for India’s past glories to be celebrated...

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist. You can follow her on twitter @ranjona